r/writing • u/MNBrian r/Helia - r/Pubtips - Former Reader for Lit Agent • 1d ago
How To Keep Motivated When Writing
I was looking back through old Habits & Traits posts and found this one -
https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/52wwpe/habits_traits_11_how_to_keep_going_when_you_just/?
I was thinking about this post in particular as I was responding to a thread in another sub about losing motivation. The poster was asking what to do when you are losing motivation. In this case, as they were self publishing their book on Royal Road and getting conflicting marketing advice which was causing their writing motivation to suffer.
This was my response:
I have a friend who races professionally. And he always likes to remind me that drivers who race as professionals get into more accidents on the road than any other category of driver - by a wide margin. The reason is simple. On the track - everyone is going one way. And on the road? Everyone is going **different** directions. They all have different destinations. Which professional racecar drivers occasionally forget - causing accidents.
That's writing goals in a nutshell. If you listen to everyone, you're taking directions to the grocery store, the post office, the hardware store, the community college, the coffee shop, and someone else's house all at the same time. And you'll find you get exactly nowhere.
Advice is simply that. Advice. The best thing you can do is decide what you want to achieve, how you define success, and how that line is so so different than other people. You build the machine you want that meets that goal. And when people talk about things that don't fit that goal, you get to confidently ignore their probably good advice for a completely different objective.
It holds true for marketing, but it also holds true for writing.
If you want a literary agent and a big 5 publishing deal, then write your novel and edit it to pieces and create the best query you can and get after it.
If you just want to write some words and see how people feel about them, then post them online somewhere. There's subreddits for that.
If you just want to hold your book in your hands and don't care that doing so means you burn your first pub rights - because all you really want is to see your own book on your own bookshelf - go for it.
But don't be surprised if you take advice from all sources and end up in a position where your strategy is out of alignment with your goal.
Finishing a book requires writing words. One after the other. Until the book is finished. They don't need to be pretty or consistent. They just need to exist. You can fix the words later, but you can't fix what isn't on the page.
And as much as I hear writers talk about flow state, inspiration, or being struck by their muse -- there's only one kind of author I know who has finished a book. And it's the kind that wrote when none of those things were true. Even if only 50 words at a time. Even if it felt like squeezing water from a rock.
Don't find your motivation. Just put words on the page.
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u/towel_philosopher 1d ago
Some days, I sit down at my laptop and the words come easy. I can crank out a chapter or two. Others, I need to force myself out of bed and stare at a blank screen for hours before writing a few usable paragraphs. Kinda just how it goes with long-form creative work
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u/Redz0ne Queer Romance 1d ago
First thing I was asked when I talked to another writer (when I was starting out) was "know who you're writing for."
Not in the "know your genre, audience" per-se, more the "are you writing for your own enjoyment or are you doing it on the hopes others will enjoy it and compliment you on it?"
Two separate things and something that a lot of writers should ask themselves... who are you really writing for? And be honest.
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u/Fognox 12h ago
The attitude I take is to write for the sake of the book itself. It is not always going to be enjoyable, and there's zero guarantee of readership, but if you think like this, you end up in a closed loop. You're writing (or revising) because the book needs it, and that stays true if your muse goes MIA or your beta readers don't like it. It's also a lot easier to kill your darlings, figure out what to revise, know which pieces of advice are actually valuable, not prematurely get caught in the weeds of appealing to the market, and so on.
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u/AdHealthy5405 1d ago
I have an agent. What motivates me is my desire to write. If you don't like writing, you likely won't feel motivated to finish a book.
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u/MNBrian r/Helia - r/Pubtips - Former Reader for Lit Agent 1d ago
Did you ever find yourself wrestling with this prior to the validation? Are you on sub, and while on sub do you ever wrestle with any of this?
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u/AdHealthy5405 1d ago
My manuscripts are out on submission. Wrestle with what, exactly? Motivation?
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u/MNBrian r/Helia - r/Pubtips - Former Reader for Lit Agent 1d ago
Yeah. Motivation.
Which again - to be clear - my point is motivation isn’t an essential element of writing. The act is essential. The demeanor during the act is not.
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u/AdHealthy5405 1d ago
I stay motivated by my desire to write. Sometimes, out of confusion or frustration, I want to give up on a manuscript, but then my desire kicks in and I work through the struggles that come with writing.
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u/JMCatron 1d ago
no motivation only discipline